


We’re Family Now

by TatteredTeddy



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Ardyn Izunia Lives, F/M, Gen, Noctis Lucis Caelum Lives, fuck it everyone lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-18 01:29:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28734984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TatteredTeddy/pseuds/TatteredTeddy
Summary: Noctis Lucis Caelum, the new king, feels like he should apologize to Kallista Lamenti, for a lot of things.
Relationships: Ardyn Izunia/Original Female Character(s)
Kudos: 1





	We’re Family Now

“Hello?”  
  
“Hey. Kali. It’s Noct.” The voice through the phone is a familiar one, which is a relief.  
  
I glance over at Ardyn, who’s fast asleep next to me, and quietly slip out of bed. “Noct?” I whisper. “It’s 3 in the morning, what’s going on?”  
  
“There’s something I want to show you.”  
  
I tiptoe out of my bedroom and close the door behind me. “What do you mean, something you want to show me?”  
  
“It’s a good thing, don’t worry. I was just thinking about it and I thought you should see it.” He sounds like he’s whispering too. Someone else must be fast asleep in the castle, and sound can travel far in those long, echoing hallways.  
  
“So do you want me to come over now?”  
  
“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking…”  
  
I groan loudly at him through the phone. “It’s three in the morning! What’s so important that you want me to come all the way to the castle now???”  
  
He sighs, as if this is a very stressful matter for him. If anything, this should be stressful for me. “Just… I think you should see this. I don’t want to spoil the surprise or anything, I guess.”  
  
“Alright… if you say so.”  
  
I tiptoe downstairs, being careful not to make a floorboard creak or a door open too loudly. Ardyn’s a very light sleeper, and I know he struggles with falling back asleep when he’s woken up in the middle of the night. My cardigan that I rarely leave the house without is thrown over a kitchen chair, so I slip it on over my pajama shirt just in case. It always gets so cold here late at night. I throw one more backward glance over my shoulder to be sure I haven’t woken Ardyn up and then sneak out the side door to my car.  
  
The terrifying anticipation of not knowing what Noct wants to show me is the loudest thing in my mind, so I try to drown it out with my music. It’s silent outside, save for the misty rain clouding my windshield. It’s as if I’m in a bubble, just me and my car radio. The drive from here to Insomnia is a pretty short one now: it never seemed so easy to get there before, but since tensions had died down between them and Niflheim and literal and metaphorical bridges were being rebuilt, travel was a million times easier, and I could get to Insomnia almost as easily as getting to downtown Gralea.  
  
The castle comes into view in the same way it did the first time I faced it in person: dark and looming over the rainy city. But it’s just a cloudy, rainy night tonight, and the sun will come out tomorrow and shine over the wet marble stairs. Unsure of where to park, I just stop in front of the steps to the front door. The sound of my car doors locking triggers the castle doors to open. Noct must have been waiting for me the whole time. He’s in his pajamas too. It’s kind of funny to see him walk out of the castle in pajamas. What a regal king he is, all sleepy and disheveled at this time of night. “Kali?” he calls down to me. “Is that you?”  
  
“Yeah, it’s me.”  
  
He comes about halfway down the stairs and stops to wait for me. Neither of us go inside, or even all the way up the stairs. We just stop in the middle. It almost feels like what he wants me to see shouldn’t be brought into the castle walls. I sit down on the marble stair, wincing at how freezing cold it is. “So what is it that you want to show me?”  
  
“I just wanted you to know that Ardyn really loves you. I know you probably know that already, but…” He sighs and looks up at me with sadness in his eyes. “I, uh… I came to visit you when you were in the hospital, the day before you came to. And while I was there, I overheard Ardyn talking to you.”  
  
I silently nod my head, clasping my hands together in my lap with an iron grip.  
  
“I got a video of it so you could hear what he was saying. It was really… really sweet, actually. And I, uh… I guess I wanted to show you this so that you’d know how much he loves you and how worried he was about you.”  
  
“You called me at 3 in the morning to show me a video of Ardyn talking to me?”  
  
“Yeah… I thought it was that important. I think anyone should know if someone loves them that much.”  
  
I can’t help but laugh a little at Noct’s logic. He probably hadn’t been sleeping before, anyway. He truly lives up to the name of his hometown. “Then I guess it’s worth it.”  
  
“Yeah. Um… here.” He turns his phone so it’s facing me, showing the cover frame of a view into my room in the hospital before starting the video.  
  
“Kali… Kali, Kali, Kali.” Ardyn’s voice trembles as he speaks to my unconscious body in the hospital bed. The recording shows him holding my hand tightly, his head ducked down as if he’s praying. “You remember when we first met, don’t you? How I didn’t realize I was staring at you? I did tell you that it was because you looked like someone in my past, which was partly true… but the truth was, I stared because you were the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. I couldn’t bear to let you go and never see you again.  
  
When you come home, I have a present for you. Something I’ve waited years to give you. Something I wish I could have given you the day we met.”  
  
Noct pauses the video and we both look down at my ring finger. The ring isn’t on right now, since I came here straight from my bed, but we’re both thinking of it. The contrast of the blood-red, heart-shaped gem surrounded by tiny diamonds against my pale skin gives me chills every time I see it.  
  
Noct gives me a shy smile before starting the video again. “I keep thinking of our wedding. You’ll look like an angel in a white dress, with deep blue sylleblossoms in your hair as a symbol of our love just as they’ve always been.” The recording shakes a little and I can hear Noct drawing in a breath behind the camera. He sounds so hurt as he watches Ardyn lean in and kiss my forehead. My skin must have been cold as ice against his lips, only warmed by the hospital’s thin bedsheets. “I promise, if you only wake up, I’ll give you the world. I’ll do anything for you.”  
  
The video cuts off and Noct looks up at me with a silent, sad expression. Neither of us know what to say. We both feel the tension of silence between us, and neither of us wants to break it. Tears choke me up and my head falls forward, tucked in toward the warmth of the sweater that feels like Ardyn and like home.  
  
“He… he had the ring before this all happened…?” I whisper. “He stayed with me in the hospital?”  
  
“He did. I… I recorded all that mostly because I was kind of in shock. I didn’t even know who you were at first. I just thought you were some bystander who got hurt in the chaos. I didn’t know Ardyn could feel love at all, to be honest, much less that much love. And if he and I are related, and you’ll be marrying him, then I guess we’re going to be family.”  
  
I look up at him, his silhouette blurred through my tears. “We really are going to be family soon. I… I can’t believe we’ll be family. I’m so sorry… I feel like I should have known before. Ardyn always told me that you were the enemy, and I believed him.”  
  
“To be honest, he was the enemy the whole time.” Noct smiles uncomfortably at me and we both break out laughing. It’s true, and we can look at it with honesty now that it’s all over and reparations are being made between this split family. “But you’re not the enemy. I guess I should try to be nicer to him now. Since he’s kind of my uncle and all.”  
  
“I’ll try to make him be nicer to you too.” My voice struggles to come out through the tears clogging my system and spilling out against my flushed cheeks. “Since you’ll be family soon.”  
  
He looks down at his phone once more before setting it down. “Do you, uh…” he mumbles, in the awkward teenage boy fashion he never really quite let go of, “…want a hug or anything?”  
  
I nod my head at him, and he opens his arms and lets me fall into them. Nothing will ever be like the way Ardyn holds me, but it’s kind of nice to be here with my soon-to-be family on the peaceful steps of the castle in the middle of the night, with misty rain falling down from the clouds that had been blocked for years before. I can tell he’s still a lot like his awkward younger self in how he awkwardly pats my back but doesn’t move away from me. He knows I need comfort from the lingering pain of the past and this overwhelming wave of heart-wrenching love for my fiancé, but he doesn’t quite know how to give it. Who could understand how to comfort someone who’d been in my position, after all?  
  
Noct lets go of me and waits for me to sit back up before clearing his throat and looking down at his hands as if he has something pretty hard to say. “I kinda feel like it’s my fault that you almost died…” he confesses. “Ardyn could’ve gotten you out of there in time if it wasn’t for me.”  
  
I wipe the tears from my eyes so I can see him more clearly. “I did get out of there in time, though. Because I’m alive. Nothing could have stopped that from happening. Everything was literally falling apart around us. One of us would have gotten hurt by something like that eventually.”  
  
“Yeah, but you weren’t meant to be involved in this fight. You shouldn’t have gotten hurt.”  
  
“I don’t blame you for that though. We don’t need to assign any blame for it. It was an unfortunate accident, but I’m okay now and that’s what matters. And everything else is okay too. Insomnia is rebuilding itself. Ardyn’s not immortal anymore and he won’t have to watch me leave him. You fixed everything. Even if Ardyn was the one who got me out of there and saved my life… you saved everything else.”  
  
Noct just nods his head. “...you’re right.”  
  
“Hey, don’t cry on me too,” I say with a forced smile.  
  
“I’m not gonna—“  
  
His composure falters and he frantically wipes a tear from his eye. “I’m sorry,” he sighs. “You’d get it if you were me. How hard it is to clean up this whole mess.”  
  
“I know. I know it’s hard. But you’re doing amazing. People think of you as a hero. You’re doing so well, and you’re gonna keep doing so well. And I’m gonna be so happy to see you standing up at my wedding, you know that?”  
  
“I… I’ll be happy to see you there too. I’m still not so happy with Ardyn, but this is what I should do. A king should love and support everyone, you know?”  
  
“Yeah. Of course. But right now, I, ah… I think both of us should go back to sleep.”  
  
He laughs and nods his head in agreement. “Yeah. I need to fix my sleep schedule. I kind of lost all my 20s, so I’m a little behind on that front.”  
  
“You sure did. I’ll let you go. Ardyn’s probably gonna wake up any second wondering where the hell I am.” I stand up and brush myself off. “Night…”  
  
“Goodnight. See you… soon, I guess.”  
  
“Yeah… see you soon.”  
  
I turn back and descend the stairs, taking it slow so as to not slip on the shiny marble covered in a sheen of water from the light rain. I hear the castle doors open and close with a ground-shaking thud behind me. The doors have always been loud, no matter how softly you tried to close them. I can imagine whoever else is in there sitting up and looking for the source of the noise. The sound of my car door slamming close as I jump into the driver’s seat to get out of the rain is almost silent in comparison.  
  
It’s quiet again in here. I can hear Ardyn’s voice in my head, the video Noct showed me with the shaky camera work of his tired hands playing on repeat in my head. Maybe I should call him so he doesn’t think I snuck out for other reasons. I quickly pull over and take out my phone to leave a message for him, in case he wakes up before I come home and realizes I’m not asleep next to him.  
  
“Hey, sweetheart. Sorry, I know it’s so early. Noct wanted to show me something. He got you talking to me in the hospital on video. I’ll explain more about it in the morning. ...Yeah, it’s a little weird that he recorded that. But what you were saying was cute. Alright, I’ll let you go. Be back soon. I love you.”


End file.
